Tuesday, May 22, 2018

For the most part the pen community is an inviting, happy
place where likeminded people show up to geek out about handwriting, inks,
paper, and writing instrument ephemera. You get the same taboo topics
(politics, religion, etc.) that you can find in any niche community. At the end
of the day there seems to be less animosity among pen users and enthusiasts
than other niche communities I’ve observed or been a part.

That’s what I thought, but things change, and apparently
I’ve either been blind or stuff is changing at a rather fast clip. What follows
is my observations specific to a rising level of elitism that borders on
classism I’ve seen crop up among the fountain pen community and spill over into
the pen community in general. Mostly this encapsulates my thoughts on the
entire situation as an observer more than as someone working in the “industry”.

I’ll be up front and honest about this post. It’s been
written before in completely different terms and contexts. But I’ve always
scrapped those posts as being far too personal, bordering on unprofessional.
I’ll do my best to limit this post and pare the personal opinions down or
remove them altogether. I’m really hoping to foster dialogue and debate in the
community as a whole. Enough prefacing, let’s start this madness.

For those that don’t know my background I’ll give as brief
an example of my “pen journey” as possible. I’ve been “into” pens now for five
or six years. I started my personal journey learning to repair fountain pens,
then branched out into modern fountain pen collecting, and landed a job at
Karas Pen Co. Now I’m active in the community as the Karas Pen Co brand
representative to the point it can seem like I’ve lost some of my objectivity,
but I assure you that’s really not the case. If anything my job at Karas has
allowed me to peel back the layers on a lot of the areas of the pen community I
always had problems with and given me a desire to see a healthy community from
all aspects, including any potential problems associated directly or indirectly
with Karas.

From Day One of my journey there was a very real
anti-newcomer/anti-user, pro-collector minority in the pen community. They were
small, but they were LOUD. And they were tied with one of the largest, if not
the LARGEST brand in the world. They railed against all other brands. Had
enough power to get anti-“their brand” posts removed. Would flood those posts
that didn’t get removed with comments making it impossible to have any
discourse. And really looked down on all pens/brands that didn’t uphold the
“luxury” mindset of fountain pens.

In general I dismissed this group immediately and steered
clear of them since I never considered myself to be a person that would own one
of “their” pens. Financially and stylistically they didn’t suit me. So I didn’t
pay them much mind.

But as time has gone on, the same mindset held by “those”
people can be seen across the community. Not just with fountain pens, but with
ballpoint and rollerball fans and even in the pencil community. The sickness of
“me versus you” based on some adopted brand identity is spreading through the
writing instrument online communities and even to the groups of users that meet
in person. And it’s both surprising and worrisome.

To illustrate my point, I’ll sketch out some situations I’ve
seen repeated time-and-again in online writing instrument forums and
communities.

A new fountain pen user will post up their surprise and joy
at winning an online auction for a Chinese pen at less than a dollar, comment
how quickly it arrived, and how pleased they are at how well such an
inexpensive pen writes. While there will be a few congratulatory posts, the
vast majority will be castigating the purchase. These rants will range from
“how could you buy some crap from China”, to “For a few bucks more you could
have got a Pilot”, to “it’s gonna break in a couple weeks” or any number of
negative posts that only serve to alienate a relatively enthusiastic newcomer.

Now I understand some cheap pens can be problematic, and
there needs to be the ability to send out a “buyer beware”. But most of these
posts are commenting on inexpensive pens from brands that have a reputation for
sending out functional pens. Most won’t be broken immediately or even after
months of heavy use. So the comments should be constrained to warnings about
actual problems that crop up from those brands.

Another one I see frequently is the denigration of all
writing instruments that aren’t fountain pens. There are entire communities
numbering in the thousands that loudly call out the terror of ballpoint and
rollerball pens. As much as they are badmouthed in those communities you’d
think they carried the plague or were seeking to bring back slavery. And god
forbid you voice your approval of a ballpoint or rollerball, you’ll be called a
Neanderthal, Philistine, fake, and likely a few four letter words as well.

This type of reaction does nothing to promote the benefit
that writing provides society. The large majority of people that currently
DON’T write with a fountain pen will NEVER write with a fountain pen. But if
you get them a cool ballpoint or rollerball you might entice them to put pen to
paper more often. The goal of writing instruments is to inspire and assist in
the creation of memories, ideas, art, etc. catalogued by placing them on paper.
We should never discourage this process of creation. Simply put this is the
worst flavor of elitism, a group that has set their own “fill-in-the-blank”
above all else and is unswerving in their devotion to that “thing”. This type
of thinking is never healthy, and only serves to drive a wedge between two
groups that at their core value the same process, if not the same implement in
that process.

As I mentioned above there are those loudly promoting one
brand or another and all of those things NOT that brand get verbally defecated
on. You’ll find this in every community, but for some reason it looms its head
large in the luxury items communities. You’ll find divisions even in this
community that only like certain elements of a certain brand, or certain
timeframes where that company released items.

Similarly there are people that will shout you down if you
aren’t supporting small, American made companies. As if the support of small
British made, Italian made, etc. companies were “lesser”. While the backstory
behind purchasing “Made in USA” is rooted in good intentions and a desire for
quality goods, that entire movement has been shot through with rot in the
recent days by companies that have a façade of “American Made” but are pretty
much American “assembled” or even just “American” shipped. They skirt the rules
and regulations but their fans are rabid and often attack anyone that tries to
show off alternatives that are of equal or greater quality. The “Made in USA”
phenomenon has become as watered down as an Instagram hashtag, it’s an overused
term that doesn’t mean what it should and is often attached to a very vocal and
verbally violent portion of elitist “gear” users.

Lastly there are those that attach value, both literal and
figurative, to the price of the item. This group is probably the most frustrating
and many times the most abusive. You can find them flexing their proverbial
muscles almost everywhere. They come out when someone posts any pen under a
certain price point. They’ll be quick to point out the flaws of the pen and
connect those directly to the cost of the pen. They’ll then show off a photo of
pricier pens in their personal collection, annotating how they are superior in
all aspects.

This is where the classism comes in specifically. Most of
these pens are out of the range of 70-90% of pen enthusiasts. They have price
tags usually attached to jewelry or mortgage payments. Like fine wines they are
rarely exponentially, or even noticeably, “better” than a pen 1/10th
their cost. And while many dream of them, those that own them seem to take
great pleasure in simply showing photos of them. A similar phenomenon occurs in
the knife collecting community, and it’s equally disconcerting. I’ve seen a pen
case full of 40 pens or an end table lined with 12 knives, the value of either
would easily purchase a $30,000 dollar car. And when asked about how often
those pens or knives get used, the owners scoff at the idea of sullying their
mint condition items.

I’m not ranting against someone using their hard-earned
money to purchase items they assign value to. The problem lies in how the
mindset of these collectors becomes vocalized and crafted into condemning new
users that can’t or never will be able to afford those luxury goods. They
alienate a vibrant, often enthusiastic, group of users that are more equipped
at spreading the word of fountain pens than the elitist group is. This larger,
less funded, group is far more likely to keep the fountain pen hobby going than
the “1%”. There is a place for both groups to coexist but before that can
happen there needs to be a “summit” between these groups in the hopes of
smoothing things out.

None of this is to say that the sky is falling in the pen
community, not the least. But as the community grows, there needs to be people
in place that can ensure it grows in a healthy manner and that the unhealthy
aspects are fixed before they can spread. I’d hate to see the pen community
devolve into a bunch of cliques that are railing against one another
incessantly. And I think there is a need for evaluation and when necessary,
correction given to those that would do harm in whatever form it may take.

So I hope you read this more as my intent to inform those of
you that frequent the pen community so you can be on the lookout for similar
instances of elitism. The desire is for the continued growth and diversity of
this wonderful community. We can spread our love of writing instruments and the
written word, but we are better when we work together than when we focus on our
divisions and differences.

Thursday, March 8, 2018

Now that we have the long and relatively boring origin story
out of the way we can focus on more important things. The ideas that drive me
to write. My “writer’s ethos” for lack of a better term. I’ve been told my
motivation to write is both sentimental and romantic. That it lacks a lot of
mechanical reasoning. I’m perfectly okay with that. I don’t ascribe to the idea
that writing has to have a designed purpose. I’m comfortable with the thought
of writing for writings sake. I’m also 100% behind writing for no other reason
than to see ink flow on paper or to test the viability of lining up words
together just for the pleasure of seeing them sit side-by-side. Writing does
not require an end game, many times an end game would completely ruin what
needs to be written; and I’m okay with that too.

I’m going to attempt to have a theme for the rest of these
posts. This will be difficult for me, because I like to jump around and being
constrained by one set of thoughts and ideas is often problematic when I’m
writing something mostly from “scratch”. That said I’ll do my best to “color
within the lines” as I’ve defined them for each post. The themes will take the
form of whatever “reason” to write I’ve identified as being important. All of
this is a loose set of rules I’m setting for myself and for you the reader. Since
importance is really a poor word for what I’m trying to relate, which shows how
long I have yet to go where writing is concerned; a better writer wouldn’t
require this disclaimer.

For Part 2 I think we should start with a tangible “reason”
to write. This is also likely the most applicable to my job at Karas Pen Co,
since the tangible “reason” to write I’ll be covering will be the writing
instrument itself. I don’t plan to land on many specific writing instruments
since that’s largely subjective, but I will tie this all in to how writing
instruments can prompt the act of writing, or foster it, or draw one to desire
to write more. The focus will be on the implement itself, and I’ll delve into
the emotional/psychological state I sometimes enter with specific pens and
pencils, but only as it applies to the writing instrument itself. So much for
the boring part of this post, let’s hope the rest of this is more enjoyable to
read…and to write.

In the past, I never paid much attention to WHAT I was
writing with. For the majority of my writing life, I just used whatever was
handy or sometimes what felt comfortable (that really only applies to pencils
in my case). When I was in high school and college I made the choice to ONLY
write with pencils. My handwriting was far too sloppy for pen use, plus I often
needed to erase entire lines of text and start over. Needless to say, pencils
were a must. Then I joined the Army, pencils were rarely used. A pen that used
black ink was the only acceptable utensil for writing. I used a Fisher Space
Pen, the standard black slip cap one, for a long time. It served me for my
entire first deployment and most of my second. But even that pen was really
only a tool, it never impacted the writing experience in a direct way. I rarely
used it for anything other than official documents, my letters were written in
pencil.

By the end of my career in the Army I was doing most of my
personal writing on a laptop. Journaling, poetry, and stories were all recorded
in a stripped-down word processor that took up little space and was designed to
hold LOTS of content. I separated from the Army, failed to backup all my files,
and subsequently lost hundreds of documents both professional and personal. After
that fiasco, I went through a period where my writing was entirely blogging and
wasn’t very imaginative or very good. Then five or six years ago, I got into
fountain pens.

My wife convinced me that a fountain pen could help improve
my handwriting. I immediately went online and started looking at pictures of
fountain pens, rather than finding reviews of fountain pens, something
completely out of character for me. Needless to say, I ordered a 1940’s
Sheaffer in that lovely green and black striated material off eBay. I had no
idea the pen needed to be repaired until it showed up to my house, and in the
space of a week I was off on a trip teaching myself fountain pen repair. This
was the beginning of my education in how a writing instrument can dramatically
change every aspect of writing.

There is something almost speechless about picking up a
truly remarkable pen or pencil. Again, I’m not speaking to specific brands or
styles, simply that a person can be a pen or pencil user for years and then one
day they are handed a pen or pencil they’ve never used and it falls into their
hand, the heavens open, and the Hallelujah
chorus starts playing. This concept is one that I first found when I
repaired a rather unremarkable looking Sheaffer Triumph Touchdown. The pen had
been a beater and seen a lot of heavy use. It took all my skills at the time to
repair it and something over 2 hours just trying to seat the rear plunger seal.
But when I was done and the pen was inked up, I set it to paper and started
writing and the experience was utterly amazing. It was unlike any other writing
experience I’d had up to that time. I wrote a page of largely nonsensical
statements and set the pen down. Immediately it was back in my hand, and I
think I filled another five pages of random writing before I forced myself to
stop writing. I’d experienced a pen that MADE me want to keep writing even when
I had nothing else to say.

I’ve since run across this numerous times, with pens ranging
from two dollar ballpoints to fountain pens costing hundreds of dollars. It’s
always a unique almost unsettling experience, especially when the pen is owned
by someone else and you have to give it back. But the experience is one, I
truly feel everyone should have. It encourages writing in a way that other
forms of encouragement simply can’t. It creates a desire to write that is
external but serves to push in a way that isn’t nagging or driven by another
human. It is also an external driver to write that can be fully controlled by
the writer, so you never feel out of control during the process.

The correct writing instrument is also important because so
much that we do today is digital. We discount analog instruments as being old
fashioned or not user friendly. But the reality is - writing, not simply
putting your brain on paper, but the analog process of writing engages the
brain in ways that other forms of communication can’t. There are numerous
studies listing the benefits of analog writing. Psychologists prescribe it as
stress relief and for those that are experiencing anxiety from being in a
constantly connected digital world. And the benefits only BEGIN at those
points. I’ve come to understand one way to get over hurdles that are often
present to new writers is finding that writer the correct pen or pencil. The
right instrument that is comfortable, feels like a part of them, encourages
them to write, isn’t too difficult to use, and speaks to who they are; all of
these are elements that can turn writing from a chore into a daily experience.

For these reasons I highly suggest going out and picking up
as many random pens and pencils as possible. Visit pen stores (yes the exist).
See if there is a pen meet up in your area. Attend a pen show. All of these
situations will bring you in contact with far more writing instruments than you
could ever imagine existed. I would wager a new pen that if given a decent
amount of writing instruments, you’ll find one that creates that “moment” for
you, and I guarantee it will be a life changing experience.

Too many people are rushing around, spending their time texting
frantically, Snapping or Tweeting and they are missing a truly experiential
method of communication that transcends all other methods. Don’t be one of
those people, I beg you. I truly wish that all of you would be able to find
that pen or pencil that can take you from a person with immense amounts of
creative potential to a person that willingly spreads that creative potential
onto thousands of pages of paper. Unlock the writer waiting inside you, we all
have one. It doesn’t have to be a bestseller to be worth a damn; your writer
could help change the life of one random person that reads a message you wrote
and left with the check at a restaurant. You never know just what you can do until
you begin. I say all great beginnings start with a fantastic pen and a blank
piece of paper.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

I’ve most likely covered this at times in other blogs. I
might have even written something with the same title, though likely not on
this scale or with the level of introspection I’m going to put into this post.
The reason I often come back to this topic, is that it is often on my mind. As
a writer, I frequently receive comments or read articles or simply have a
thought that prompt me to think about this topic. The answer isn’t always
exactly the same, the origin story of my writing is the same, but the reasons
or the important circumstances for that period of time might lead to respond
differently. This series on “Why I Write” will take the reader from my origin
story through many of the reasons I’ve landed on. Some of those reasons will be
recurring and others will be one’s I’ve landed on and while I’ve remembered
them, they might have only applied to that time in my life. Mostly I want to
connect with the reader in a way that prompts them to consider why they write
or perhaps help them experience writing differently.

Origins of a Writer

I write because I can’t draw. That statement is anathema to
a lot of people. It comes across relatively strong and sure, but at the same
time dismissive. You’re reading it but let me be clear I’m saying it in a way
that should convey total confidence in you that I mean what I say. I didn’t
grow up dreaming about being a writer. I loved to read, but I only fell on
writing because I failed time and again at drawing. I grew up dreaming about
being a comic book artist.

From the time I could mow a lawn, wash a car, and have a
paper route; I read comic books. My mom bought my brother and I comics earlier which
started my addiction to them. But she couldn’t afford it very often, so it was
more of a luxury. When I was ten or eleven, I began doing small extra chores
for money. Mowing our massive front and back yard for five dollars, washing the
car for three dollars, I got paper route that paid something like forty-five
dollars a month. There were a lot of things I bought: baseball and basketball
cards, G.I. Joes, gum and candy, but comic books were at the top of the list.

I grew up in what I still consider to be the comic book
revival. Comics fell off in the 80’s some in quality outside of books like Dark Knight and Watchmen there was a lot of garbage coming from the DC and Marvel.
That combined with how poorly artists were paid for their work caused a major
move in the comic book industry right at the time I was able to start buying
comics with my own money. In the 90’s well-known artists left DC and Marvel and
started their own studios. Image comics was the collective these studios worked
under, and I feel in love with nearly every release Image put out in their
early days.

Artists like Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Marc Silvestri, and
Whilce Portracio left major publications, to create new heroes and villains
with new artwork and coloring. Spawn,
WildC.A.T.s, Cyberforce, and Wetworks along
with numerous other titles were born. Unbeknownst to me they brought with them
one of the best comic book writers of all time, Chris Claremont. I didn’t care
about that, all I cared about was the art.

With a great burning desire I invested every leftover cent I
had in sketchbooks, mechanical pencils, woodcase pencils, even colored pencils
all in a vain attempt to create my own comic book. I checked out every book on
drawing the library had (this was pre-internet so the library was a big part of
my childhood) and began trying to teach myself how to draw. I went through
hundreds of pages of dogs, cars, dinosaurs, sharks, and other random sketchable
objects. Weeks turned into months and I flipped through sketchbooks, my heart sank
as I turned each page. There was no improvement. I could sketch rough animals,
was slightly better at buildings and cars, but when it came to people I was
horrendous. There was no other way to put it, I couldn’t draw a person to save
my life. If I couldn’t draw people, there was no way I could create my own
comic book.

In a fit of anger and sadness I carried all of the
sketchbooks to the trash and tossed them in. Took the leftovers and gave them
to my brother. Returned the books on drawing and on a whim checked out Fellowship of the Ring. I barricaded
myself in my room and came out when I was done with the series. A new light in
my eyes. I went from a fantasy world of comic books to a fantasy world of
words. Characters leapt off the page, the thousands of hours reading comics and
attempting to draw had only honed my already well-developed imagination; and
they enabled me to see every person, place, and thing in Middle Earth as if I
was standing right there.

My brother had taken up the pencils and expanded to paints
and other mediums. Where I failed at art, he flourished. Inside I was jealous
and a bit angry, but he was my best friend and after a while I simply let it
go. Art slowly faded as I finished more and more books, before long I was
writing, albeit poorly. Derivative stories of superheroes or fantasy wizards
and warriors. My brother and I began talking about collaborating on our own
comic book. I’d write it and he’d illustrate it. We never did anything beyond a
few panels; it is something I still wish we’d accomplished.

My writing overflowed in nearly every aspect of my life. I
had always loved essays and reports, not I craved them. I read voraciously
throughout junior high and high school and wrote pages upon pages. Everything
from fantasy, to reports on small battles in World War II, to poetry, and even a
few terrible rap lyrics. I wrote everything by hand until my junior year of
high school when I bought an electric typewriter. I’d write by hand when I was
out, then take over on the typewriter when I got home. I’d use a three-hole punch
and put the typed pages in a binder with the handwritten pages.

Looking back on my origin story, I’m no longer sad and angry
about not being able to draw. I found a different medium of creation and
expression. Writing is a part of me, it’s integral to who I am and who I’ve
become. It’s grown and changed with me as time has gone on. I went from
thinking of it mostly as a tool that helped me through school and then later on
to secure work to now considering it something of a trusted companion.

Writing is something that transcends the simple task of
putting pen to paper. It’s more than arranging letters into words and words
into sentences. For me it’s becomes a way to put myself into the very stories
and poems I write. I leave part of myself in every piece. It’s not a conscious
decision I make, it just ends up that way. What I write is important to me and
so I take pride in it, but I also understand that what I write MIGHT be
important to others. I just hope that others who read my pieces take away
something from it, and maybe they get to know me a little bit in the process
too.